I love Last Epoch, but one of the things that I have lamented for a while is that there just does not feel like there is enough to do in the game. So as a result, I have a couple of good weeks and then bounce because I run out of things that I actually care to do. On Tuesday nights, Ace and I have what we refer to as “Sibling Time” and more often than not lately it just ends up with us hanging out and chatting while we are doing out own things. Ace has been enjoying Path of Exile more than normal, but also was talking about how much they were looking forward to Last Epoch. At this point, I dug out my old lament, which led to us trying to dissect why it is that Last Epoch does not have the staying power that Path of Exile does. After some back and forth, I think we landed on the “why” behind this statement.
Ace and I have had a lot of bonding moments over the years. There is a natural back and forth between a tank that I always played and a healer that they always played. There is also the bonding of growing up in oddly similar circumstances, despite being in wildly different states. However, I would say probably our most pivotal bonding experience was a shared love of Diablo, and quite frankly, were it not for them and the fun that I had playing Diablo III Seasons, I would probably not be the ARPG junkie that I am today. I will always be deeply thankful for them indoctrinating me into the cyclical nature of Diablo III Seasons, and quite honestly, it was an event that I looked forward to more than pretty much anything else on the gaming calendar. I cannot say with any certainty which season was the first season we did this ritual together, but it became sacred.
So much of this experience centered around the Diablo III Seasons Journey, which was a series of achievements that ultimately unlocked some sort of cosmetic item. Generally speaking, this was some sort of a pet or a portal effect, and in the grand scheme of modern MTX, it was rather meager. What it did more than anything was give us something to focus on other than just grinding mobs and explosions of loot. Sure, we only got a week or two out of a Diablo III season, and by the end of that first weekend, we would have 90% of the list checked off, but it did force us to do some outliers in order to complete everything. This is what Last Epoch is missing, some sort of long ranged goal that we can focus on during the season and that pushes us to do specific content in order to knock out individual achievements.
I’ve also realized that is really what changed regarding my interaction with Path of Exile. Starting with the Sanctum league I started caring about trying to complete league challenges. This was an easy carryover from Diablo III, since I was already in that mindset, and for each league from that point forward, I have purposefully tried to get enough challenges completed to earn the little totem pole for my hideout. It started with just attempting to get one at all, to now where I am specifically trying to finish at least 34 of 40 each league, so I can earn the same size as I have in the last several leagues. I’ve never actually completed 40 of 40, because it involves doing a bunch of bossing, which is not really something I enjoy, given that bossing characters are different from mapping characters. It still gives me something to focus on and has pushed me outside of my comfort zone and forced me to learn a bunch of leagues’ worth of content that I had never interacted with previously.
Even Diablo IV has something similar in the form of the battlepass, and while I have issues with its specific implementation… it still gives a long tail to the league. There are specific things that you can focus on doing in order to unlock a sequence of cosmetic items. They made it worse since, in order to do most of these, you have to pay money to unlock them, but it still exists in one form or another. Last Epoch does not have something like this. Sure, Last Epoch has a ladder, but I am not the sort of competitive player who gives a shit about this sort of thing. What it is missing is some sort of long grind that has a destination in mind and rewards some sort of bauble for doing so. There is a certain measure of bragging rights in being able to show off your pet from a season, years later, after it is no longer available. Not that Last Epoch MTX are generally that great… it still would give me a bit more focus towards pushing down to specific levels in the Monolith, completing dungeons, or something that would push me out of the standard practice of playing for a few weeks and then going right back to Path of Exile.
Right now, the closest thing that Last Epoch has is the Forgotten Knights path of killing Harbingers and fighting Aberroth. However, this is often something that you can do in a single weekend with a good enough build and does not really require you to go out of your way in order to accomplish it. I feel like this is the equivalent of unlocking your Atlas and Voidstones in Path of Exile, and less a destination and more the starting place of the “true” endgame. I feel like Last Epoch really needs something that will take a few weeks to chip through in order to keep us grinding well past the natural expiration date of one of their seasons. I’ve jokingly said that I really like grinding and loot explosions, but it seems like the thing that really keeps me engaged is a series of tasks to tick off. I think this is in part why I love daily quests so much, because it gives me a reason to play the game and something specific to focus on without having to make any real decisions for myself. Similarly, this is why I have engaged in so many Legendary gear grinds in Guild Wars 2, because it gives me an overarching goal to focus on. Last Epoch really needs something more than trying to get slightly better gear, and I am hoping that, at some point, they give us some equivalent to all of these systems that I talked about today.
All of that said, I am still really looking forward to the launch of Last Epoch Season 4 when it drops on the 26th of this month. However, I still expect to mostly play for a few weeks and then go right back to Path of Exile.
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